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Utah’s insanity laws tough go to site insanity vs p90x

Deseret News (Salt Lake City) July 27, 2006 | Sara Israelsen Deseret Morning News PROVO — A man who says God told him to gun down a dozen people can’t hope to be found “not guilty by reason of insanity” if tried in Utah.

Neither could a Texas mother who drowned her children in a bathtub under the deluded belief that she was saving their souls from Satan.

But that verdict is an option in Texas. And on Wednesday, Andrea Yates was found not guilty by reason of insanity in her second murder trial for drowning her five children in 2001.

However, Utah is one of three U.S. states that have abolished the wording in the traditional insanity plea so those accused of murder can’t claim they didn’t know their actions were wrong.

“It’s not a defense in Utah that you think you’ve been commanded by God to kill somebody,” said Creighton Horton, chief of the Utah attorney general’s criminal justice division. “You still know you’re killing a human being.” Utah’s mental-defense laws became tougher almost two decades ago when lawmakers removed the phrase “appreciating the wrongfulness of the act” from the law. The change makes it more difficult for attorneys to defend mentally ill clients.

Tom Means, head of the Utah County Public Defender Association, says it’s “an uncommon defense.

“It’s so rigorous,” he said. “It’s a very difficult defense to prove.” Means, though, is trying to do it. He’s using the rare defense in the case of a man charged with first-degree murder for fatally shooting his brother in June 2005.

Eryk Drej told police he killed his brother to prevent him from killing another woman and selling her organs on the black market. In another bizarre act, Drej told officials he had placed “smiley faces” around his mother’s American Fork home to warn his brother of impending danger.

After two competency reviews Drej was found competent to understand the legal proceedings. Now, however, mental health experts will be evaluating the 32-year-old man for his mental state at the time of the shooting.

Insanity laws in Utah Utah and many other states tightened their insanity laws shortly after the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan in 1981. After a trial in 1983, shooter John Hinckley Jr. was found “not guilty by reason of insanity.” Defense attorneys cited an obsession with the movie “Taxi Driver” and its star Jodie Foster as the driving forces behind Hinckley’s acts.

A backlash after the verdict pushed Congress and legislatures in many states to change their laws. Some states required that defense attorneys, not prosecutors, prove insanity. Others, like Utah, removed the insanity plea for defendants who argued that they saw nothing wrong in their actions.

The first type of mental health defense in Utah requires an attorney to prove that a client was mentally ill at the time of the crime and, based on delusions, believed the crime was justified.

So if someone believed in a deluded state that he was in a war firing at enemy soldiers or protecting someone else from harm he would be legally justified in using deadly force. The hard part is proving the defendant’s deluded state was real.

“It’s not that uncommon that the notice is given that the (attorney) intends to run this kind of defense,” Horton said. “(But) not many of them actually end up in contested trial.” The second defense requires an attorney to prove that a client didn’t fully realize she was killing someone. An example: a mentally ill woman who thought she was squeezing a grapefruit but was actually strangling a child.

During trial, an attorney would likely have mental health experts testify about the person’s behavior and mind-set at the time of the crime.

A conviction after the first type of defense, a special mitigation defense — allowed only for capital murder, murder or attempted murder cases — would reduce the criminal charge one degree — from a first-degree felony to a second-degree felony, etc.

A conviction with the second defense would find an individual guilty and mentally ill. The person’s sentence wouldn’t be lessened but would allow for mental health treatment.

“Practically 97 percent of (people) who were mentally ill at the time (of the crime) qualify for the guilty and mentally ill,” Horton said, citing rough statistics from personal experience. “It doesn’t reduce the crime, it doesn’t take away possibility of punishment. It’s first and foremost a plea of guilt.” While not a reduction of the crime or the level of the subsequent punishment, the plea just helps an individual get mental-health treatment, Horton said.

Insanity laws elsewhere In California, unlike Utah, defendants have the option to plead “guilty, but not guilty by reason of insanity,” which means they will spend their entire sentence in the state mental hospital rather than prison, if convicted.

Also unlike Utah, California still allows an individual an insanity plea if he didn’t understand or believe that his behavior was criminal. The attorney must also prove that the individual was unable to conform his behavior to the law. go to site insanity vs p90x

The case of Dan White in San Francisco also dramatically affected how insanity defenses are now conducted.

In 1979, after an argument, former policeman White sneaked into the capital building and fatally shot Mayor George Moscone and a state employee, Harvey Milk.

White’s attorney convinced the jury that his client had been suffering from depression and was not himself when he loaded the 10 bullets into his gun.

The case also ended up being known for the “Twinkie defense,” in which White’s attorney argued that his client’s mental capacity was diminished because of his abnormal consumption of sugary junk food. Use of the diminished-capacity logic as a mental-health defense has been curtailed, but many still associate the cream-filled treat with a flimsy argument.

“It was a horrible case,” said Scott Baly, defense attorney at the Fresno Public Defender’s Office in California. “It added in California a distaste, a nationwide distaste, for mental health defenses in general.” A mental health defense is still difficult, said Baly, who has handled only a few cases using mental-health defenses. However, Baly said the defense should be used more often to help those with serious problems.

“When you see people suffering from these illness … it’s very real to them,” Baly said. “It’s not a pleasant place to be. If they (react) to a psychotic voice that they’re hearing in their head… they shouldn’t be punished the same way as someone who acts deliberately with willful malice.” Sara Israelsen Deseret Morning News

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